Sermons

---

From Hope to Holiness... And Back Again
June 9, 2002
Second in a sermon series on I and II Peter
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Let me take just a minute and remind you about the Summer Bible studies that will be starting soon. There’s a women’s study that Lynne Baab will be facilitating, and a men’s one that I will be, both looking at some of Jesus’ encounters with people out of the gospel of Luke. Lynne and I have been arguing this week over the location of these studies, and it looks like the women will be in the soft, comfortable, pleasant Parlor, while the men will be in the rigid, stiff Fellowship Hall!

Last week, we talked about the apostle Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers, and one of the leaders of the early church after Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension to heaven. Today we begin to plunge into the first letter in the New Testament that bears his name…First Peter.

Why should we read this? After all, one might say, First Peter is written into an environment where Christians were being persecuted for the faith, and that’s not happening where we are. And some modern scholars now question whether the apostle Peter even wrote the letter…though for me that is not a big question. In the earliest centuries, the authenticity of First Peter was never questioned…and I haven’t seen arguments that should change that viewpoint. But First Peter is a letter from antiquity, from probably the early 60’s AD…what could it possibly say to us today? Actually, I believe that is exactly what we are supposed to be about in studying the scripture, this one and any other…we are to ask the question: “What could God be saying through this text to us today? How might this be God’s word for us?”

1 Peter 3:1-9,13-21

The date is July 19, AD 64. The place is Rome, center of the universe at that point in history. And fires are burning out of control, everywhere. Eventually 10 of the 14 distinct sections of the mega-city will be severely damaged or burned the ground. Little escapes the roaring flames. And from the very first night, the ugly rumors spread: The fire had been set by order of the Emperor of the Roman Empire, Nero…and his men had stopped any efforts to extinguish it before it spread. It was well-known that Nero had an ego bigger than the Empire. It was well-known that Nero had long desired to create a NEW Rome, HIS Rome that would bear his mark into history. And so the rumors. And thus the old slogan you may have heard, “Rome burned while Nero fiddled.” The picture conjured up of the emperor whiling away his time while his city was destroyed is exactly what many Romans thought happened.

In the end, Nero got what he wanted. The city was almost totally rebuilt, the roads widened, the architecture well-planned, and a huge new palace with elaborate and fabulous gardens constructed all around it. Still the ugly rumors persisted, and Nero’s popularity in the Gallup polls of the day dipped to an all-time low.

And so after a time there emerged another ugly rumor, this one surely started by Nero himself: The fire had been set by some troublemakers of Rome, by a sect of religious fanatics who believed themselves going to a heavenly paradise and who therefore did not care about the current day…a bunch of religious folks whom even the Jewish leaders were suspicious of, with their claims that God’s messiah had appeared. Nero said it was the CHRISTIANS who had set the fire. And after a time of allowing the rumors to percolate, the Roman militia began rounding up known Christians. They were brought to a public trial of sorts there in Nero’s extensive gardens. Those who would deny being part of this religious offshoot were set free. Those who would not deny their allegiance to a god called Christ were executed.

Some were crucified on crosses. Some were sewn up into fresh animal skins and died when the wild dogs were unleashed on them. Others were covered with pitch and lit as torches as evening fell. It was perhaps the largest “persecution” up to that time, though it was by no means systematic or universal in the Roman empire. But other persecutions would break out from time to time around the Empire for several more centuries.

Imagine then, that you are the apostle Peter. You are residing in Rome as the rumors and then facts of persecution begin to appear, and since you are a respected leader of Christians, you know your days are most likely numbered…and indeed, church history says that both Peter and the apostle Paul were executed around this time in Rome.

Peter is older now, and writes a letter that will be read to the Christians dispersed around the Mediterranean, but particularly the churches in modern day Turkey…churches he knows will face persecution, if they have not already. Persecution, discrimination, violence done solely because one confesses to being a Christian.

That is obviously not the situation we live in here in the United States. But what we tend to forget about so easily…is that even now in 2002, that IS the way it is in much of the world. In China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, many Muslim countries, Nepal…the church IS the persecuted church. People are locked up or killed merely for being Christians…it is so far away from our world, it doesn’t seem real.

At the very least, it should make us do a couple of things. One is to remember to pray for and to learn from those Christians in countries where there is great danger. Some of you have read in the Briefs that I’ll be going with a group to China in October to visit our missionaries, Brad and Carol. One of the things we will get to do is visit with some of the Chinese Christians who meet in small groups in homes. Brad emailed and asked if I wanted to meet some pastors, even be willing to do some teaching, and I told him “I’d love to.” Later, I began to wonder what on earth I would have to offer to someone who lives in great risk merely for confessing Christ. I look forward to learning from these brothers and sisters. And secondly, we need to ask ourselves the question: Why is it that the places where the church suffers…are often the places it grows the most? Apathy and complacency are often the words used to describe American Christians. But these are Christians dealing with things more important than the color of the new church van, or the rules that govern church committees.

So Peter writes to these believers. He knows it’s probably his one shot. What will he write? What should he say? Should he give advice? Comfort? What would you say? What would you say to someone if you just had one shot, and then really did not know what the uncertainties of the world might bring them? Some of you have kids graduating now from high school, or college. It’s a definite transition in life, a time to let go in so many ways…if you were to write a brief letter to your student to help them along the way…what would you say? Or if you had the opportunity of knowing you would not live much longer, and could write a letter to your niece, or granddaughter, or neighbor, what would it say? Peter’s decision is very clear: You write about the most important thing first. You write about HOPE. “Biblical hope,” one author says, is “the expectation of a favorable future under God’s direction.”

Hope is a topic Peter has no problem writing about. In fact, it is one he has a hard time staying away from. After addressing his letter, he plunges into verse 3 in typically enthusiastic fashion: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a LIVING HOPE through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…and into an inheritance that is imperishable…” The believers that Peter is writing to are those who may be in grave danger when they read his words, and indeed by the time they do, HE himself may be gone. What is important, what is going to last? Peter’s sentences are packed with GOSPEL. With good news. Just in this one little section, a reader is reminded of all these things:

Our HOPE, our expectation for a favorable future…comes from God’s great MERCY, not something we brought about. It is something GIVEN to us by God, handed over as a gift. The good news can only be compared with a NEW BIRTH, with life STARTING OVER, because it changes everything. It is SEEN CLEARLY in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that hope is something imperishable, something eternal. It is not bound by time, it is not limited to the present. And if the present circumstances are dark and dangerous, if they include suffering and trials…then remember that this will make your faith stronger. And when in the end you die, your hope is in something that does not.

Peter assures them…and US…that first and foremost, before anything else…that our hope is in Jesus Christ. The foundation. Bigger than suffering, more powerful than death. It’s like he’s saying, “If you only get one thing, get this! Memorize it, know it, feel it. If you only get this one thing, remember this: Your hope is in Christ.” What would your message be?

Though not necessarily intentional, I notice that I’ve developed a pattern for when I leave for a trip, or usually even when I just say goodnight to our three kids…I whisper in their ear: “I love you…and Jesus loves you too.” Whatever else may go on in their lives, whatever difficult things come up, if they could just know these two things: that I love them…and that in Jesus Christ God loves them too… then I could be content. They could get lots of things wrong if they could get that right.

Two years ago, our friend and organist Mary Pence was dying of cancer. I went and visited her about three months before she died. She had just been through a long ordeal to replace the line for chemicals running into her body. Mary loved the Lord. We talked that day about all sorts of things. We talked very openly and honestly about the difficult place that she was in, reading the Words of God from Isaiah 43 together, “When you pass through the deep water, and through the fire…I will be with you.” Mary knew she was in that deep water…but she also knew she wasn’t alone. In the middle of our conversation, she looked at me and said, “How do people go through this who don’t know the Lord, Dan?” And I said, “I don’t know. Honest to God, Mary, I do not know. Peter says first things first: Don’t ever forget where your hope is. You have a present and a future…in Christ. And it is ROCK solid.

Now, after starting out with the reason for HOPE…Peter tries to move on in this letter, he really does! In verse 13, he begins to make an abrupt shift. “THEREFORE,” he says. “THEREFORE prepare your minds for action, discipline yourselves.” THEREFORE, LIVE out your faith. Don’t be conformed to the desires the world cultivates in you. Be different. It’s okay to be different. You’re supposed to be different! God is holy, separate and distinct…and God’s people should reflect something of God, “be holy yourselves in all your conduct!”

Peter tries so hard to do exactly what the apostle Paul does in virtually every other New Testament letter to the early church. Begin by talking about God, what God has done in Christ, where our hope lies in God’s grace…and then use the great THEREFORE to talk about how to live it out. Move from theology to ethics, from belief to action, from inner spirituality to outer manifestation. And for a few sentences, it works. THEREFORE live your life differently. THEREFOR let the hope change how you live, where you put your priorities. THEREFORE, be more like obedient children, doing what your parent says, than following whatever you want to do.

That word, “therefore,” is like bridge between these two pieces of land, hope in Christ on one side, and living it out on the other. Peter tries to start talking in more detail about how to live in holiness. But he just can’t stay there very long. Oh, he’ll come back to it later in this letter. But here, in the beginning of his letter he can only stay there about four sentences. And then he is right back into HOPE. “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors…with the precious blood of Christ…Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and HOPE are set on God.”

It’s a nice pattern, actually: HOPE-to-HOLINESS-and back to HOPE.
It’s almost as though Peter knew that even when we start in the hope of Christ…living out the call to holiness is difficult. Almost like he knew that as we live out our hope we stumble over pride and ego and selfishness, we run over people…we sin. We fail. We fall. But thanks be to God, the hope of the gospel lies on both sides like bookends that protect what’s in between, bracketing the reality of life with the surrounding grace of the gospel.

So…Rome may have burned while Nero fiddled. But somewhere in that vicinity around Rome, in those days…was this man with more important things to do with his time than fiddle. One of them was to write to churches experiencing the wrath of persecution. The Apostle Peter’s letter written so long ago, reminds us and challenges us and draws us:

a) It reminds us that our church in the United States is in both a privileged and a precarious position, because of our freedom but also our affluence and comfort. We must pray and learn from those who risk their very lives confessing Christ…that we might be ready to do so as well.

b) It challenges us to strive for holiness in living our lives, because we have come to know eternal hope in Christ…we strive to live the way God asks…not just the way we desire.

c) And I Peter draws us back again and again to the ground of our hope, Jesus Christ:

“Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.” Amen.